Impressionable Youth Takes Up Smoking

LDP Queensland Senate Candidate John Humphreys – a non-smoker – has pledged to take up smoking for the duration of the election campaign.

I already enjoy drinking and playing poker and make no apologies. While I’m not a smoker, I certainly stand up for the right of people to smoke without being hassled or made into a pariah. To show my support for smoker’s rights I will smoke every day for the remainder of the campaign.

“That red wine stuff — how it was supposed to be protective — was hyped completely out of whack by the media,” Rehm said. “And whatever protective effect there is, is not about the red wine — it’s about the alcohol.”

According to data compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, alcohol consumption is the third-biggest cause of preventable death in the United States, after smoking and obesity. The centers estimate that in 2001, the most recent year for which data is available, drinking caused nearly 93,000 deaths.

Absolute bullshit JC and a slander. The post was a partial review of Robert Proctor’s The Nazi War on Cancer and neither Proctor nor myself justified Nazism for opposing smoking or anything else. Some of the earliest epidemiological work on various types of cancer was done in pre-War Germany that predated the work by Doll and others in 1950 confirming the absolute connection between smoking and lung cancer. Some of the earliest studies in Germany went back to the 1920s and hence were 30 years ahead of their time.

Why do you hate other people smoking? I can understand if you’re not keen on smoking yourself. In fact, I think that’s great — smoking is a filthy habit and it makes the curtains smell. But you hate other people smoking. Doesn’t that strike you as a little overzealous? Do you hate people’s other unhealthy habits?

Its a fair question Alpine. Generally I am interested in promoting the welfare of sentient (human/non-human) beings – it is part of my profession as an economist. I don’t treat people’s tastes as God-given and necessarily best from their own viewpoint. Tastes are partly God-given and partly a question of education and knowledge.

Tobacco was introduced into Europe partly on the basis of its claimed health benefits – it was claimed to cure cancers and even to be useful in helping tiger bites to heal! Preferences for smoking were spread around the world by European traders and by the end of the 17th century the habit had spread everywhere.

Cigarettes were introduced mainly after about 1880 as a more convenient way of absorbing nicotine. By the 1920s lung cancer emerged for the first time as a significant disease and it was understood that cigarette smoking involves addiction to the drug nicotine and to the prospect of lung cancer.

Smoking kills about half the people who take up the habit – it does not just make the curtains stink. My judgement is (contrary to Yobbo’s view) is that life – even as an oldie like myself – is better than death and that people who smoke would be better-off (even after the difficulties of quitting) not smoking. They would live longer and be subject to damaging diseases later in life when the damages probably matter less.

So yes – if you can tell me a way of improving people’s lives that is cost-effective and based on logic and evidence, as an economist I am interested.

The LDP position seems to be – let people engage in any form of stupid behaviour at all – they are the best judges of their own welfare. That 3.4 million Australians smoke thereby exposing themselves to high health costs – most of whom regret ever starting the habit – suggests this is simple-minded nonsense.

So yes I am a busybody and a ‘little overzealous’ but in the main I would like to be seen as an economist who applies reason to the issue of making people better-off. I am not a dictator and you can reject my views. On the other hand I have a notoriously big mouth and you won’t shut me up.

That’s fair enough. I particularly agree that people should be educated as to the dangers of smoking. But from what I can see the LDP isn’t supporting smoking, it’s supporting the right to smoke. That seems fair enough too.

If smoking was really that hazardous and a killer habit, very few would smoke today. Nicotine &#8212 the active substance in cigarettes &#8212 is akin to similar chemicals found in tea and coffee, and other habit related drugs. Having a cigarette means…